Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Be Aware of This Prevalent Corporate Scam in Life Insurance Payout Situations
July 28th, 2010Via: Bloomberg: Lohman, a public health nurse who helps special-needs children, says she had always believed that her son’s life insurance funds were in a bank insured by the FDIC. That money — like $28 billion in 1 million death-benefit accounts managed by insurers — wasn’t actually sitting in a bank. It was being held […]
Land Of The Free: Never In The Civilized World Have So Many Been Locked Up For So Little
July 28th, 2010And not a word about the profit incentive to lock people up! America’s Private Gulag is over a decade old, but worth reading if you’re new to the concept of the prison industrial complex: To be profitable, private prison firms must ensure that prisons are not only built but also filled. Industry experts say a […]
U.S. Rescue May Reach $23.7 Trillion (???)
July 27th, 2010Via: Bloomberg: U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program. The Treasury’s $700 billion bank-investment program represents a fraction of all federal support to resuscitate the U.S. financial […]
What I Did When I Couldn’t Find a Job
July 27th, 2010Via: Chronicle of Higher Education: It was a bit of a shock, losing all expectations. For years—all my life, really—parents, teachers, and guidance counselors had told me that if I went to a good college and did well, I would be able to find a job after graduation that would, with a little ladder-climbing, keep […]
Raw Food Raid in Los Angeles
July 26th, 2010Via: Los Angeles Times: With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts. Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the […]
Cities Give Land Away In Attempt to Gain Taxpayers
July 26th, 2010Via: New York Times: Give away land to make money? It hardly sounds like a prudent scheme. But in a bit of déjà vu, that is exactly what this small Nebraska city aims to do. Beatrice was a starting point for the Homestead Act of 1862, the federal law that handed land to pioneering farmers. […]
Automated Debt-Collection Lawsuits Engulf Courts
July 26th, 2010Great innovations in the bucket shop economy. Via: New York Times: As millions of Americans have fallen behind on paying their bills, debt collection law firms have been clogging courtrooms with lawsuits seeking repayment. Few have been as prolific as Cohen & Slamowitz, a Woodbury, N.Y., firm that has specialized in debt collection for nearly […]
Corexit: “People who work near it are hemorrhaging internally.”
July 26th, 2010Via: Democracy Now: Well, Corexit is one of a number of dispersants, that are toxic, that are used to atomize the oil and force it down the water column so that it’s invisible to the eye. In this case, these dispersants were used in massive quantities, almost two million gallons so far, to hide the […]
Poverty and Hunger in Ohio
July 26th, 2010Television, white bread and Pepsi… Sometimes cigarettes. *shrug shoulders* That guy trying to avoid freezing to death in the basement with his two sons… Man, that segment is going to haunt me for a long time. The show is in multiple parts. If you click through, the links to the next clip are on the […]
Pay Czar Will Not Fight Banks on $1.6 Billion in Executive Pay; Shaming Them Is Enough
July 24th, 2010Via: AP: For all his tough talk about excessive pay for bankers, the Obama administration’s pay czar let the executives go without a fight. Kenneth Feinberg announced Friday that he would not try to recoup $1.6 billion in compensation given to top executives at bailed-out banks because he thought shaming them was punishment enough. His […]
